Open-source

Open source meets economic stimulus

We’ve all heard about the nightmare mishaps in hospital surgeries — doctors look at the wrong charts and you come out of what was supposed to be routine surgery with missing limbs. What would happen if you presented them with a complex electronic system of health records?

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McNealy on IBM rumors

What is Scott McNealy’s take on the much-reported IBM/Sun combo under discussion? According to Alex Barrett, pretty much what you’d expect.  As in:

“I can’t comment, but if we were to buy IBM, I can tell you that we would open source AIX, DB2 and all that proprietary mainframe stuff…..But we only have $3 billion in the bank, and I’d want to keep at least $1 billion, so I don’t know about the ROI.”

Barrett attended an executive breakfast in Boston Wednesday featuring the recently elusive Sun chairman. You can bet when Sun planned this little lovefest, it didn’t expect to be facing the IBM tsunami. The subject, after all, was supposed to be Sun’s big bet on open source technologies and solutions blah blah blah. But of course what everyone wanted to know was all about IBM. And Scooter didn’t disappoint.

Microsoft exposes open source’s ‘hidden costs’

Microsoft has spent a surprising amount of time, effort and money on open source initiatives this year.

At Interop back in April, Bob Muglia spent nearly an entire keynote discussing Microsoft’s interoperability with non-Windows environments. In August, the company invested $100 million in Novell support certificates for customers moving to enterprise-class Linux. Microsoft and Novell unveiled a joint virtualization product in September, and just last month they launched a SUSE Linux management pack.

But don’t let all that fool you into thinking that Microsoft is all lovey-dovey with the open source world. In light of a report that Windows’ market share has dropped below 90%, the company went back on the attack today with a press release titled “Microsoft Gives Businesses Lower TCO Versus Hidden Costs of Open Source.”

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Sun CEO to open source ponytail

Okay, this is hilarious. Check it out. It’s got everything: Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, open source, and Schwartz’s ponytail.  Don’t mock, you cynics. Faux Schwartz has a point: You don’t see Steve Ballmer open sourcing HIS ponytail.

Cisco’s Jabber acquisition heats up the collaboration race

Cisco Systems has acquired open source instant messaging and presence company Jabber less than a month after it picked up e-mail and calendaring software provider PostPath. The move signifies Cisco’s ongoing moves to reach out of the network and onto the desktop.

Terms of the deal have not yet been announced. Cisco executives were unavailable to discuss the impact of the deal on Cisco or Jabber partners.

Though Cisco already owns instant messaging and presence features, Jabber’s applications are open source and based on its own Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). These applications are therefore easier to integrate into emailing, calendaring and other Web 2.0 software across the board, giving Cisco a leg up in the collaboration race against Microsoft and IBM. Continued »

Interop: Are tradeshows dead?

I was truly confused Wednesday morning when I jumped off the bus near the Jacob Javits Center in New York for Interop and saw armies of tight skirts and multi-colored stilettos trotting up the ramp to the convention center. This is not IT conference wear. These are not tech rats. No wrinkled khakis. Too many cutesy chicks. Continued »

Zimbra wants to out-Outlook Outlook

 You have to hand it to Zimbra.The company, now part of Yahoo and seemingly unfazed by all that entails, is nothing if not aggressive. With Zimbra Desktop it’s now taking on the grand poobah of e-mail clients.

Yes, Zimbra is trying to out-Outlook Microsoft Outlook. The nerve!

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Ubuntu goes mobile

Canonical on Tuesday posted its Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition to its website.

This is a developers’ release based on the desktop edition of the Linux fan-favorite Ubuntu operating system. The release should help developers tailor apps to smaller screens

Ubuntu MID will start to follow the usual Ubuntu six-month release cycle starting with the Ubuntu 8.10 release.

MySQL switches version control

MySQL is switching version control ships, leaving BitKeeper for Bazaar, an open-source version control system.

“Both the main MySQL server code and the code for many ancillary projects have been converted to Bazaar and are published on Launchpad,” blogged Kaj Arno, MySQL’s vice president of community. (Sun Microsystems bought MySQL earlier this year.) Continued »

MySQL road show stresses enterprise cred

MySQL execs took to the road this week, talking up the database’s increasing relevance to big businesses.

The message at a Boston event Tuesday night, was that Sun Microsystems’ buyout of the open source database company gives MySQL easier entry into very large accounts. Continued »